Turning tolls into a progressive tax: The next logical step for the toll-takers

(The Star-Ledger)Toll: Up till now there was not way to make them progressive.

A reader alerted me to this piece in Slate about an Orwellian plan out west to put tracking devices in every car to charge by miles driven.

That idea is bad enough, but look at this wrinkle (italics mine:)

Under the idea being studied by the San Francisco-area Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Mercury News’ Mike Rosenberg explains, “Drivers would likely have to install GPS-like trackers on their cars to tally travel in the nine-county Bay Area, from freeways to neighborhood streets, with only low-income people exempted.”

Again, let me make the obvious point about tolls. There are two types of people who believe in tolls: Real smart people and real stupid people.

The real smart people are all of those bureaucrats and crony capitalists who realize they can make billions charging you to drive on roads you're already paying for through the gas tax.

The real stupid people are those who believe tolls are a "user fee" that is compatible with conservative principles.

Dimwits - you don't mind if I call you dimwits, do you? - the gas tax is already a user fee, and a much more efficient one. It costs mere pennies per mile.

Meanwhile tolls can easily exceed a dollar per mile. You'd have to be a real dolt to want to pay 100 times as much for the same service.

And the gas tax a flat tax, like we conservatives advocate, not a progressive tax of the type that the liberals love. People pay not according to their incomes but according to how much wear and tear they put on the roads.

With the gas tax, even lower-income people have to pay their fair share. I regularly see people who don't look very rich driving giant gas-guzzlers. Every time I see this, I think of how little income tax they probably pay. I'm glad there's one tax they can't dodge.

And they can't indulge in class warfare to have the gas tax raised on the rich.

Well they couldn't until now.

As this story shows, with tolls the sky's the limit - and Big Brother will be up there watching you.